Lesson 2: Hard Disk Drives
Hard disk drives are mass storage devices. Virtually all of today's computers have at least one hard disk drive. The first hard disk drives were small in capacity, physically large, and expensive, by today's standards; they were about 4 inches tall, 5.25 inches wide, 8 inches long, and weighed almost 10 pounds. In 1981, IBM introduced the XT computer with a 10-MB hard drive, and new owners wondered what they would do with all that space. Today, a new hard disk drive can fit in your pocket and hold over 17 GB of data. In this lesson, we examine hard disk drives, from the early versions to today's mini-monsters.
After this lesson, you will be able to:
- Explain the operation of a hard disk drive.
- Define the different types of hard disk drives, including their advantages and disadvantages.
- Partition a hard disk drive.
- Troubleshoot hard disk drives.
Estimated lesson time: 45 minutes